


Fairvale

by mmcgui12_gmu_psycho (mmcgui12_gmu)



Category: Psycho (1960)
Genre: (And Most of That's Just the Prologue), F/M, Gravity Falls AU, Meta, Miscarriage, Murder, Post-Canon Fix-It, Rating May Change, Referenced Mental Illness, Referenced Suicide Attempt, Self-Insert, Yes that one OC is partially based on Aughra from Dark Crystal thanks for asking.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-02-13 03:43:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21487786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmcgui12_gmu/pseuds/mmcgui12_gmu_psycho
Summary: Basically a self-insert Psycho V with shades of Gravity Falls. (I'm still trying to figure out what that means.)
Collections: The Most Random Crossovers and AUs





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Fairvale](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5178707) by [Hobbit4Lyfe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbit4Lyfe/pseuds/Hobbit4Lyfe). 
  * In response to a prompt by [mmcgui12_gmu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmcgui12_gmu/pseuds/mmcgui12_gmu) in the [The_Most_Random_Crossovers](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/The_Most_Random_Crossovers) collection. 

> I'm basically making this a "spiritual successor" to my old fic Fairvale on my old AO3 account (and previously FanFiction.net) and putting the direct Fairvale sequel I started on indefinite hold.
> 
> Also, I recycled the title "Fairvale" because I'm too lazy to come up with something else cool.

A Timeline:

In December 1959, Norman Bates became the most infamous resident of Fairvale, California. His murder of Marion Crane led to the discovery that the deaths of Norman's mother and her boyfriend the decade earlier were a double homicide instead of a murder-suicide. Norman was also connected to two other murders within the decade between his mother's death and Marion's.

Shortly afterward, during the trial, Norman was found not guilty of Marion's murder due to mental illness. Norman had developed a second personality, that of his mother, after that first murder, and had committed the subsequent murders in the second personality.

In 1960, filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock directed a biopic of Norman, Marion, and the murder, based on the writings of Robert Bloch.

In 1982, Norman Bates would be released from the mental hospital where he'd been treated for the last 22 years. This would trigger two sets of events: Lila Loomis, the sister of Marion Crane, and Lila's daughter, Mary, conspiring to convince Norman he's resumed killing with his mother's personality; and Emma Spool, a local waitress, committing murders in order to protect Norman.

Until late in this series of murders, with the exception of the murder of Mrs. Loomis by Ms. Spool, it was unclear which murders were committed by which woman.

One such murder was that of Warren Toomey, the sleazy manager of the motel Norman once owned, having reopened it two years prior to Norman's release from the hospital, as a more adult-friendly motel.

Upon discovering that Emma Spool was the sister of Norman's mother, and that she believed herself to be Norman's birth mother, Norman killed Ms. Spool, preserved her body as he'd once done with Mrs. Bates', and developed another personality of his "Real Mother."

For the rest of that summer, Norman closed the motel in order to renovate it into something more like he'd remembered from when he'd originally run it.

Early that fall, the Bates Motel was reopened.

And the reopening of the motel would be Norman's second downfall.

A nun named Maureen Coyle, who was kicked out of a nearby convent after killing her Mother Superior during a failed suicide attempt, ended up at the motel. She was closely followed by aspiring musician Duane Duke.

Around this time, Norman began killing again under his "mother" personality. The final two deaths would be Maureen, who'd become a potential love interest, and Duke, who'd come close to exposing Emma's mummy to the world.

A local reporter called Tracy Venable discovered that, while Emma Spool was Norma Bates' sister, she was never Norman's mother. She'd killed Norman's father in a fit of jealousy because she'd been upset that he'd married Norma, before trying to kidnap Norman to raise as the son she'd imagined she'd had with his father. She'd been released from a different mental hospital a matter of months before Norman.

Tracy also discovered a shrine Norman had set up for Maureen. Norman was re-arrested and sent back to another mental hospital.

Two more biopics about Norman, regarding the events of the summer and fall of 1982, were released: One in 1983, and the other in 1986.

In 1990, a made-for-TV special was released. It was written by Joseph Stefano, the man who'd penned the original biopic.

While it's true that in 1989, shortly before the TV movie was released, Norman was released from the hospital again, and had gotten married, what had happened in this final film was greatly sensationalized by Stefano in order to include plot points he'd wanted to include in the original (only to be rejected by Alfred Hitchcock because they didn't quite fit the story).

Norman's wife, Connie, wasn't actually his doctor who'd entered an unethical relationship with a patient. Connie was someone Norman had met through church after leaving the Fairvale area post-rerelease. While she had gotten pregnant after birth control failed, it was never an intentional plan from Connie to have a child that Norman didn't want to risk inheriting a genetic predisposition to mental illness. In fact, the child (who'd been implied to have been born at the end of the movie) had actually been miscarried, and the strain eventually drove Norman and Connie to divorce.

The prominent flashback moments in the 1990 movie, ones that Joseph Stefano wanted to include in the 1960 movie, weren't completely the result of mental illness-related unreliable narrator issues. They were just sensationalized interpretations of how Norman killed his mother and her boyfriend in the late 1940s and two more women in the 1950s (though Norman's mental health was a factor, it was highly overexaggerated by Stefano).

While Norman did actually burn down the Bates Motel and his childhood home behind it, he never intended to kill Connie there as well. They went their separate ways post-miscarriage and divorce.

And so, it sat there until 2018. The daughter of Norman's former sister-in-law, Connie's niece, found the motel and decided to get a few friends together to live in the home behind it and reopen the motel itself. It took over a year, nearly two years, for everything to be rebuilt...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, I seriously apologize for the lengthy prologue that's basically movie series recap-meets-fix-it fic for Psycho IV completely changing series canon (and un-fucking-up the-Norman/Connie Ship)-meets-Official Prologue connecting the movie universe to the sequel fic. With a few meta moments where the movie universe... exists in the movie universe.
> 
> Face claims:  
Norman Bates: http://www.listal.com/viewimage/1130589  
Mary Loomis: https://www.listal.com/viewimage/1154225


	2. The Week Before

December 5, 2019.

It was a week out from the grand reopening of the Bates Motel. Megan McGuire knew that reopening the motel on the 60th anniversary of Marion Crane's murder was horrible timing, but initially the idea was an accident.

But then fans started booking cabins months in advance, hoping to be the first ones to stay in the infamous Cabin 1. So Megan just decided to just roll with it.

For a while, Megan wondered if reopening that day would be the best idea, and that she should fudge some delays in reopening because of some made-up accidents like a small fire in the office parlor or a scaffolding collapse, in order to push the reopening to the new year. But somehow the town of Fairvale allowed the reopening of the motel to be on December 12th, the actual night Marion arrived at the motel to meet her untimely demise.

Megan had to keep herself from laughing at the online discussions about what day the actual death anniversary was, citing a couple incorrect dates: The 11th, while the day the whole story with Marion began, was only the last time anyone in Phoenix had seen Marion. It was the day she'd fled Arizona for California with the money she'd embezzled from her job at a real estate agency, sure, but she'd spent the night on the side of the highway in her car, not at the motel. The 18th was also incorrect, since that was the day Detective Arbogast first talked to Lila (then Crane) and Sam Loomis a week after Marion's initial disappearance. Arbogast didn't actually die until the evening of the 20th after going to interview Norman Bates.

Not that Megan was overly interested in her no-longer-quite-family history. At least, not outwardly. If only her Aunt Connie could see her now...

Megan and her friends had reclaimed the house on the hill behind the motel in their effort to rebuild and reopen. Megan had taken Norma's master bedroom. Katherine Kirkpatrick took Norman's childhood bedroom. Tamia Williams had taken the spare bedroom where Mary Loomis had stayed in the second biopic. Jill St. Germain and Ashley Kraak took the attic after the group of girls redirected the rebuilt stairwell to open up in the hallway instead of the master bedroom.

Whether or not the other girls were still awake, Megan didn't know, but she was still up possibly too late reading. The week before, she'd gone to a bookstore in town and had come across _Solace Island_ by someone called Mary Samuels.

Megan wouldn't have been suspicious about the author's name if the accompanying photo didn't look suspiciously like Mary Loomis, who'd initially come to the Bates Motel under that name. And then there was the rumor that the ending of the second biopic had been changed to the one seen instead of the original ending where Mary had actually survived her injuries and had been institutionalized herself before moving to the Pacific Northwest (or maybe Canada?) after her release.

But this book seemed to be proof that Mary Loomis was still alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Face claims:  
Megan McGuire: http://www.listal.com/viewimage/9246977  
Katherine Kirkpatrick: http://www.listal.com/viewimage/917965  
Tamia Williams: https://www.listal.com/viewimage/15078139  
Ashley Kraak: https://www.listal.com/viewimage/18564081  
Jill St. Germain: https://www.listal.com/viewimage/14196335


	3. The Bookstore

Megan should not have stayed up all night reading _Solace Island_. The snooze button on her clock and her warm bed were her best friends, she thought.

She got up closer to noon than she initially wanted. She couldn't get rid of that nagging feeling she had, and had planned to go into town to go back to the indie bookstore run by Abbigail Ryan, a retired journalist for the newspaper there in Fairvale, so she could pick up the sequels. But of course the one night Megan was free to stay up to finish reading, she stayed up all night and ended up oversleeping.

The good thing was, though, that her friends all seemed to have gotten up late as well. Katherine was pulling some cinnamon rolls she'd just made out of the oven.

Without waiting for them to cool, Megan took one of the rolls and juggled it onto a napkin, licking the cream frosting off her burnt fingers.

"Hey, Kat, thanks for breakfast," she said. "I'm running out to Ryan's Bookstore. Want me to get anything while I'm in town?"

"Hey, hold up, I'm coming with you, girl," Tamia replied, getting up from the table and getting a cinnamon roll for herself. "I need to get something from Aughra, too."

Megan and Tamia went to get changed while waiting for an Uber to show up.

Half an hour later, Megan and Tamia were at the bookstore in Downtown Fairvale. Abbigail Ryan was at the front desk.

"I had a sneaking suspicion you two would be coming by today," Ms. Ryan said. She pulled two books out from the shelf behind her, giving them to Megan and saying, "You're here for these, I'll bet."

She came out from behind the counter and continued, to Tamia, "I gotta go to the back to get your order. Remember this is strictly under the table."

Ms. Ryan started towards the stock room in the back of the store pausing and turning back to Megan. "Oh, right. Before I forget. Mary Samuels is having a signing here on the 13th. Keep your ears out for a last-minute cancellation for the opening of your motel and a call from her agent."

With that, she started back to the storeroom. As if on cue, Megan's phone buzzed.

"The fuck?" Tamia asked.

Megan took her phone out of her pocket. "Yup. Looks like we just got someone to cancel their reservation next week. And... Of course Cabin 1 just opened up."

And then Megan's phone started ringing, a number she didn't recognize showing up on her caller ID.

"Hello? Yeah, speaking." Megan grabbed a flyer Ms. Ryan made for the book signing from the front desk before continuing, "Yeah, we just got an opening at the motel. Hey, can I pass along your details to Jill St. Germain, the social media manager at the motel? I can have her set up a promo for the signing. Yeah, thanks. Bye."

With that, Megan hung up in time for Ms. Ryan to come back and hand a tray of brownies to Tamia.

"Got everything you need?" Ms. Ryan asked.

"Yeah, we're good," replied Tamia.

Megan paid for the two books and left with Tamia.

Tamia said, "Yo, now I see why everyone calls her Aughra."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Face claim:  
Abbigail Ryan: https://www.listal.com/viewimage/21827362

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Google Reads Fanfics: Fairvale](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22791586) by [mmcgui12sthings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmcgui12sthings/pseuds/mmcgui12sthings)


End file.
